Tech philosopher George Gilder offers a short creative video (1:21 min) to drill down on an often overlooked relationship:

The source of prosperity is not technology or money in his view; it is intelligence — often expressed as the technologies by which we express ourselves and better our lives:

That’s why, in a world saturated with pessimism, Gilder is very much an optimist. And the question we should ask is, given American history, why should anyone assume that the pessimists are right and he is wrong?

At one time, many people knew why the moon walk couldn’t happen, why the human genome couldn’t be mapped, why the average schoolkid couldn’t have a personal computer…

So the talk of limits has now shifted

Today, we hear nightmare hype about the evil AI, just around the corner, that is smarter than the people who build it. And why the government needs to crack down, for our own good, on independent sources of information. Why cities can’t innovate and why prosperity is a thing of the past so we must just get used to managed shortages.

Do you believe that, in technology, the past is a reasonable guide to the future? Then you probably have a lot of questions about cultural messages of doom and decline. In that case, you won’t want to miss COSM 2024: Register here:

Here are interviews and panels from previous COSMs.

Here’s another one-minute explainer: COSM 2024: Is There Room at the Top for Intelligence? Before there was technology, there was intelligence… If what will happen with technology in the next two decades is the kind of thing you need to know for your future, you can hear from people who are helping make it happen at COSM.